Logo of the Museum of Vestigial Desire
The Museum of Vestigial Desire

Wish

tags: escalation published on:

We do not wish for anything. Because anything that we wish for becomes a thorn in our eye. And prevents experience from transgressing ordinariness. Wishes are suction pumps. They take us away from the pain of dealing with the here and now. The here and now is a jumble. It is a mess. It is a hassle. Why can't we just deal with it?

If we wish to deal with our situation, we have to create distance. We have to develop the ability to instrumentalise ourselves. And that is just impossible. No amount of generosity and forthrightness is going to let us get out of our skin. It is our skin that binds us in a fixed way to this moment. And our relationship with our own skin can never involve a wish. Wishes are array lists of desires. And desires are distractions.

Distraction takes the reader away. We want the reader to stay. Not necessarily alert, not necessarily awake. But present. The surface of the reader is in a constant flux. The text and its reader are in a dance. This dance is choreographed. It has a graph. It has moments of heightened tension and really sedated moments as well. We are not anxious. We are not nervous. There is a plan. And because there is a plan, we do not wish for anything. And we do not allow the reader to wish either. That is the only degree of control we exert. Be here. Be uncomfortable, that's ok. But be here. Your being allows for our graph to unravel. Else we have to be intensive in the utilization of our contact-time. And that breaks our tempo, that disturbs us.

‹ index